Page 2 - A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
Like all true wireless earphones, 1MORE provides a carrying case that doubles as a charger for the earbuds. The charging case is consistent with the overall color scheme of our white 1MORE ComfoBuds Z True Wireless, which has a matte white finish with 1MORE's logo on top. Both its shape and design are quite conservative looking like an egg, but I am not complaining. I prefer a matte finish compared to the glossy one like the ColorBuds True Wireless, mainly because the glossy finish will attract fingerprints and scratches will be more obvious. It measures in at 3.85 cm in height, 6.0 cm in width, 3.0 cm in depth, and weighs 39.4g with the earphones in, which is very similar to the ColorBuds. This makes the ComfoBuds Z compact and can be conveniently carried in a bag or jacket pocket. In front, there is one multicolor LED to indicate the current charge status, which is green for full battery, orange for medium battery, and red for low battery. It glows red when it the charging case is plugged in and charging and turns off when charging is complete. It will also flash red if the charging case's battery is too low.
Each piece of the ComfoBuds Z True Wireless has a 30mAh built-in battery for up to 3.5 hours of battery life over Bluetooth Low Energy and 2.5 hours over Bluetooth at 50% volume. They weigh 2.7g each and measures in at 24mm by 9.2mm by 14.2mm at its largest dimensions, making them measurably lighter and smaller than the ColorBuds True Wireless, which itself are pretty compact. They take approximately 65 minutes to charge using the charging case. The charging case supports up to three recharge cycles, or an additional 10.5 hours and 7.5 hours of music over BLE and Bluetooth, respectively, for the earbuds with its 410mAh internal battery. The charging case itself also takes about 75 minutes to charge via its USB Type-C port. I am very happy to see a USB Type-C port, given it is 2021. From my experience, the battery life estimate was pretty close, since I got 3.2 hours at 50% volume from my tests. It is nowhere nearly as good as the ColorBuds, but it is acceptable, considering how compact the ComfoBuds Z are.
The 1MORE ComfoBuds Z True Wireless earbuds are revealed once you flip open the top of the charging case. The pairing occurs as soon as the case lid is opened rather than when the earbuds are removed from the case, making the process faster. The earbuds have a simple and clean appearance in a good way, where the exposed portion comes in a matte white finish with 1MORE's logo on the outside. I am a fan of its understated and low-profile look, and it works very well in not calling too much attention to itself in day-to-day use. Adjacent to each earphone on the case is also where a small white indicator LED is located to indicate its charge or pairing status. A pair button in located between the indicator LEDs.
The 1MORE ComfoBuds Z True Wireless earphones connect to your audio source device via Bluetooth 5.0. Bluetooth Low Energy is supported to increase battery life as aforementioned. Protocols supported over Bluetooth 5.0 include AAC and SBC. SBC, or Subband Coding, is the default Bluetooth audio codec with reasonably good audio quality and low processing power requirements. For Apple users, the ComfoBuds Z True Wireless supports AAC, which communicates at about 250kbps from the source. Unfortunately, there is no aptX support.
Each side of the 1MORE ColorBuds True Wireless will automatically turn on once you open the case. As you can see in our photo above, since there are no wires, 1MORE uses a pair of pogo pins on each side to keep those electrons flowing when it is inside the charging case. You can use these earbuds in mono or stereo mode, and it will indicate using different sounds in your ears the battery and connection status for each earbud.
The design of these earbuds is symmetrical with no controls, microphone, or sensors on them for simplicity. There is an indicator LED on each earbud behind the white enclosure, but they are very faint. This gives the ComfoBuds Z an ergonomic shape and makes them very small, light, and low profile, so they feel very comfortable as its name suggest. I could almost forget they are in my ears. I found its fit to be very good as well. When I am running, they do not lose its seal easily. Compared to the ColorBuds True Wireless, they protrude even less out the side of my ears, which looks great while in use. This is also very helpful if you plan to sleep with them on as a side sleeper. Through my extensive testing, they have never fallen out of my ears. I tried shaking them out and they simply will not go anywhere.
Taking off the sleeves reveal its full-range balanced armature driver. Its frequency response and output power were not given. Its 22 Ω impedance is a bit higher than the Stylish True Wireless' 16 Ω impedance, but same as the ColorBuds True Wireless. 1MORE claims these full-range balanced armatures reproduce a balanced and authentic sound with fine details, which I will discuss in my auditioning results in just a moment. The drivers aim directly into your ear for a more direct and transparent sound reproduction characteristic like many modern in-ear monitors. At the same time, it makes the earphones easy to clean in the long run too. Anti-bacterial sleeves come in four sizes to maximize comfort and fit. The circular-shaped acoustic tube via the sleeves assists the aim into the user's ear canals, and since these earphones are designed for a closed configuration, the 1MORE ComfoBuds Z True Wireless are made for passive noise canceling for noise reduction of up to 24dB.
The 1MORE ComfoBuds Z True Wireless comes with special features to enhance your sleep and requires you to install the app for you to use them. Once the 1MORE Music app was installed onto my Apple iPhone 12 Pro, it automatically detected the earphones, as shown in the first screenshot above. The user interface is intuitive and easy to use in my opinion.
In the main screen, you can switch between the Music and Soothing EQ presets. The Music preset is the default setting, whereas Soothing dampens the lower and upper frequencies to help you calm down. The second screenshot is the Soothing Sounds screen, where you can listen to one of thirty built-in soothing sounds to help you sleep. The soothing sounds can be set to play with a 30, 60-, 90-, 120-, or 150-minute auto-off timer. One interesting feature in the app is the Smart Burn-In feature, where the app will help you automatically burn in your earphones and will take approximately 12 hours.
With all this in mind, how will they perform? As always, we have the entire Page 3 dedicated to presenting our auditioning results.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
3. Subjective Audio Analysis
4. Conclusion
